Adam Phillips - Waterlollies

The emergence of the internet was a very strange time, especially for online media. The birth of the internet opened a window for anyone and everyone to create anything they wanted, and a huge audience would appear. Tastes were a lot less discerning back then because the tools to express yourself were relatively primitive. Flash animation quickly became popular as it wasn't taxing on the old connection speeds, and was easily accessible by everyone. This was of course great for creators, but led to a slew of sloppy amateur videos that were quite frankly, really bad. These old videos hold a special place in my heart of course, but would hold no water in the new era of Youtube.

I would browse these old Newgrounds videos for hours, entertained by immature sex jokes poorly animated with various pokemon cameos. Then I stumbled onto the Brackenwood series by Adam Phillips. Watching his videos were like night and day. It was actually shocking to see someone use Flash to animate something with more movement and attention to detail than most of the cartoons on television. In a few minutes of video, you can instantly tell that hundreds of hours were lovingly poured into it.

Not only was the animation significantly better than the other flash videos, the tone of the piece was markedly light. Instead of immature violence and puberty-burgeoning sex gags, Phillips took the time to create a vast and interesting forest world filled with whimsy and wonder. The traditional Celtic music only strengthened the forest theme, and gives all of the pieces a distinct flavour that I haven't seen anywhere else.

The video I've chosen for the post is 'Waterlollies', which is actually the last of a series of three videos about the character. The main character of the series, Bitey, is an incredibly fast forest creature resembling the god Pan. Bitey is shown to be a lovable rascal; A mean-spirited trickster that will go out of his way to annoy or injure other creatures for his own wanton enjoyment. Phillips later went on to give this character more backstory, but moved onto bigger things working with Disney, Wizards of the Coast, and Bioware.